Every Free Breath
by AprilTheAmazon
Summary: She boards a ship in Maine still named Corinne Fuller. She departs the ship in Saint Denis calling herself Verity Bostik. An outlaw woman unable or unwilling to live by any standards but her own, she thirsts for guns, gold, and gorgeous women. When a wealthy benefactor breaks her out of prison, she is beholden to another, and finds she likes calling Jessica LeClerc her Mistress.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I've been an outlaw for every free breath I've ever filled my lungs with. It's a fact for certain folk that there's no other way to breathe free and a further fact that some folk wouldn't have it any other way.

My mom was from Derry. She came over with her first husband and four brothers in the final year of Lincoln's war to save the union. Of the six of them, three survived the trip and only my mom survived the war. The man she married next, the man who is called my dad on any paperwork that matters, wasn't my dad and I think he knew it. The farrier who came to shoe the horses on our ranch was a massive Scotsman named Jack McGregor. If I had to bet, I'd say he was my dad, but nobody admitted it even when I grew to nearly six feet and had the fire red hair, green eyes, and freckles that marked McGregor but weren't present on my mom or the man who raised me.

I was raised on Anderson ranch in southern Maine. The man that my mom claimed was my dad, Mr. Jacob Anderson, was a rail thin, rancher with dark hair, pale blue eyes, and a black moustache the width and density of a ship timber. I was worked from sunup to sundown, slaughtering, breaking, mending, and taking beatings from Mr. Anderson for the slightest ill, that was, until I was too big for him to think it wise to fetch a switch or a belt.

I'd saved, scrimped, and even stole a little to build up a stash of money, planning to run out west. Mr. Anderson found the money and valuables under a floorboard in my room and came to confront me about the parts that clearly weren't mine. He found me indisposed in the hayloft with his niece, Jenny Albright. Since Mr. Anderson wasn't my actual father, Jenny wasn't my cousin in any way that counted. Jenny and I were still in a congress the good book would call sinful and god-fearing folk definitely call immoral when we were discovered.

Rather than wait for Mr. Anderson to fetch the length of barbwire he meant to scourge the wickedness from me with, I clocked the hollering fool with an axe handle and left him bleeding in the yard. I scooped up the money, stole his gun, kissed Jenny goodbye, and fled for Bar Harbor. Now I'm fast in the saddle, quick with a gun, and don't mind hurting folk that aim to hurt me, but that don't make me foolhardy or prone to overestimating my chances. The world's a scary enough place for a girl of seventeen without adding the trouble I'd heaped on myself that night.

I made it to the coast and sought a boat, thinking I might go to Europe or somewhere warm. Even if I spent my small fortune, sold the stolen horse and pilfered gun, I'd have still been short by half to get anywhere that the law couldn't reach me.

"How far away can I get with what I've got?"

"Saint Denis," the ticket feller told me. "That's down in Leymone."

"Send me there, quick as you please," I said and slid over the whole of my money.

Saint Denis sounded French, especially the way some of the folk boarding the ship talked, but it weren't French, not even a little. Swamp city filled with everything you'd never want all in the same place. That's what the sailors told me and I believed it because he had the haunted sort of eyes that had seen things no man ought to.

I spent my days up on the deck, as much as I could anyway. Sea travel made my stomach churn so I ate little and drank less, always trying to keep the railing in sight for when I might next feel the urge to expel what little was in my stomach into the water. Cigarettes were about the only sustenance I could manage and so I smoked while huddling into my jacket against the cold winds off the Atlantic.

I saw her the third day out. I'd long since run out of my own smokes and had taken to foraging, swiping, or begging to keep my lungs filled and my growling stomach quiet. Her name was Varity Bostik and she was a vision to turn the most focused of heads in her direction. I watched her for a time, standing at the railing in her heavy, blue velvet finery. She was the tallest woman I'd seen aside from myself, but where I was mostly gnarled farm girl muscles and calluses, she was porcelain white and tender as a newborn foal.

Normally I have a swagger and confidence unbecoming of the fairer sex when it comes to the ladies. This one sent me shuffling, hat in hand, all manners and averted eyes to ask for a spare cigarette, if she didn't mind the charity.

She gave me a smile, a smoke, and a light.

"Varity Bostik," she said, "if you please." And I very much did.

"Cori Fuller," was my reply and only half a lie, perhaps a bit more. My Christian name, not that the church ever held much sway over me, wasn't Cori, nor was my family name Fuller. Excepting, it was in a way. I weren't an Anderson, I knew that as much as anything, and I wasn't a McGregor, not for dead certain. So I must have been a Fuller, which was the name my mother had before she was ever married. And Cori is what I was called around the ranch, never you mind why, making Cori Fuller as much my name as any other.

We smoked and talked that day. She offered me a nip from a flask and I was happy for the burning whiskey in my throat. We strolled and spoke the next day. She seemed curious about a woman in pants, boots, and a man's jacket. I told her not all women came in such lovely packages as she did, and she told me she didn't know about that and gave me a kiss on my cheek that burns in my memory and on my skin to this day.

We were at sea for ten days with a stop off at Baltimore to refuel, take on mail, and swap out passengers. By the time we passed into the slightly warmer waters around the Carolinas, I was sleeping every night in Varity's cabin, sharing her bed, eating her food, and making plans in my mind for all the ways in which we might take the world by the mane, throw our legs over its bareback, and ride like a saddle would only slow us down.

When we rounded the point of Florida, she took me out to the railing in the black of night and we watched the Florida Keys on the horizon to the north.

"That's Key West lighthouse," she told me. "I used to have an old picture of it that my father sent me before he died."

"We could go back there, if you want," I said. "You've got a camera, don't you? Maybe take your own picture?"

"Sweet, simple girl," she said. "My husband would never allow such frivolities."

"Husband?" I've been kicked by a horse, square in the chest, most ranchers have, and it hurts like nothing else you can imagine. You sit down or lie back and hope you'll ever breathe right again. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.

"I've enjoyed our dalliances upon the sea," she said, unfazed by my stricken face and quaking voice. "You are an interesting creature and I would not trade our time together for the world, but you are not…"

"Of quality," I finished for her. It was the thing she said when something wasn't to her taste. A cigarette rolled poorly, an overdone egg, a frayed hem, these were 'things not of quality.' My entire self was pitched into the pile of distasteful things suitable only if nothing else was available.

"Yes," she said. "Precisely."

Get kicked by a horse, you've got two options. Get up, make sure the horse knows never to do that again and get on with your life, or quit ranching and raise sheep. I never was one to quit and I don't think much of sheep farmers.

She didn't scream. I never gave her that chance. We were at the railing behind the starboard paddle wheel in the dead of night. The splash her body made in the churning, frothy, black water didn't even reach my ears let alone those of the lookout in the crow's nest. I returned to her room, changed into her clothes, and stayed abed for the rest of the journey, taking food and service when it came, always signing 'Varity Bostik' when necessary.

In Saint Denis, I departed the ship walking with my head held high, a fine woman of means.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I weren't born to being a lady. This wasn't the problem I imagined it would be in Saint Denis. In fact, I spent a good deal of time and money as Mrs. Bostik. As one predilected to pushing my luck, I did just that. Cards and letters came to the hotel room I'd rented, or more accurately put on credit against my "husband's" name. I ignored these to my detriment.

People had noticed my skin was no longer arsenic white, that my hair was decidedly red rather than blond, and that I often misspelled my own name. Does Varity have two R's? Ending in a Y or an IE? Bostik must have a C before the K. I tried all combinations and it did not go unnoticed. If I'd bothered to read any of the notes, rather than let them collect in a silver tray by the door, I would have known my cover was long since blown and that I should flee rather than settle further in by renting a small house near the park where they sometimes held hangings.

This is where the police, accompanied by Mr. Bostik, found me. Yes, I'd been impersonating her. No, I didn't know where she was. We'd met on the boat and then she vanished. I simply took an opportunity that I oughtn't have. I was hungry and scared. That was all. Nobody believed me despite most of what I was saying being at least mostly true.

The police wanted to pin the murder on me. No body, no weapon, no witnesses, and the ship we'd traveled on had already sailed for Belize. I thought Mr. Bostik would spend cash, gold, and every favor he'd ever collected to chase me to the gallows, but he didn't. In fact, he stated his wife probably met with an unfortunate accident. She was the type to stumble, make grievous errors in judgment, and he'd long feared it would catch up to her one day.

I was swiftly arrested, tried, and convicted of fraud, impersonation, and minor theft of clothing, some jewelry, and luggage. Six years in all on Sisika Prison's women's wing. I fancied I'd escape. Swim for the shore, steal a horse, and fly to the west with my spurs burning. This was, of course, a fool's notion.

After a few months in lockup, I learned Mr. Bostik hadn't wanted his wife murdered, but accidentally dead. Apparently the insurance policy he'd taken out on her wouldn't pay nearly as much if she met an untimely end at the hand of someone he perhaps had hired to do the deed. If she accidentally disappeared and he could obtain affidavits from the captain and crew of the ship that she'd fallen overboard in an accident, testimony I'm sure he bribed well for, he could obtain the whole of the policy, which I never did learn the total sum of. His greed kept me from the gallows and I never did thank him.

I shared a cell with a freewoman named Betty Scruggs. She was from Lagras out in the bayou and said her auntie sold bait and lures, best in the world. I was never much for fishing, but I liked listening to her talk in her pidgin mix of Creole, French, and English. She had a voice like music and black hair prematurely streaked with silver. I couldn't make heads or tails of most of what she said, but it was pleasing to listen to all the same and she didn't much mind that I didn't keep up my end of the conversation.

In the muggy darkness of night, I'd think about Varity and the way her soft, straight blond hair would combine with my wild, wavy red on the pillow. The way she'd kiss the inside of my wrist and call me her sweet Coriander. She didn't cook much or know anything about what she ate, so she didn't know coriander is tart, not sweet, and I wasn't inclined to correct her. I was sour and acidic, but liked being called sweet, even inaccurately.

Then I'd wake and the French perfume, clean linen, and the smell of sex would be replaced with the stench of body odor, urine, and mildew. I'd bind my hair in a braid because we weren't allowed to leave it free unless you were a freewoman because all the guards were white and the warden didn't seem to think white boys would have much interest in colored women. The warden was a thunderous moron in many ways, including that one.

I asked Betty about the terms, colored, freewoman or freeman, or whatever else her kind got called. There weren't any like her where I was from in Maine but the prison and most of Saint Denis boasted more than a few and so I thought I should learn what was right and proper. She said freewoman only made sense for those that were slaves once, like herself. Excepting, she wasn't free no more. So she said she was probably just colored like the rest. It all seemed pretty arbitrary to me, but I guess someone put some thought into at some point since a lot of folk seemed to agree on who was called what. Since I couldn't make sense of the rules and they didn't seem important unless you had it in your mind to be a bastard to someone, I never brought the conversation up again, simply using her name to avoid the matter. She was my friend, or so I hoped, and the subject seemed to vex her. Satisfying my curiosity weren't worth vexing a friend.

Betty got me on the work detail that got to leave the prison, replacing another towering redhead with a scar on her cheek. The new girl was an angry sort, swore up and down she didn't belong there, and made a general nuisance of herself. It was all too easy for Betty to convince the guards one redhead with a scar was as good as another and to take me instead. I didn't talk much and could swing a hammer just as well or better than any woman and most men. I never learned the source of the other woman's scar. I escaped that day in her stead and she was hanged a week later for a crime she swore she knew nothing about.

The story behind my scar that runs from my right eye down my cheek and nearly to my jaw line isn't all that interesting. I was trying to work as an apprentice ferryman one summer and took a boathook to the face because I didn't duck when I was supposed to. The doctor in our town was a good for nothing drunk so the stitches went in crooked and I ended up with a nasty line as a reminder to keep my head down when metal is flying.

I met Mr. Horley up in the forest between West Elizabeth and the Heartlands. Him and a couple hired guns stopped the cage wagon, told the guards to skedaddle, and set everyone free excepting me. I never seen three women so tired from rock breaking run so fast. Betty Scruggs was over the hill and past the horizon before my shackles were off. He had a story about a murdered man, a miscarriage of justice pinning it on me, and an opportunity to keep my life and clear my name. You, me, and the devil below knows I was guilty and it weren't of killing a man, but Mr. Horley seemed nice, he offered me freedom, and he seemed to have a plan. Out of curiosity and nothing better to do, I followed him to the woman he called his Mistress.

Mrs. LeClerk, Jessica I believe was her given name, was a striking woman, older, but in a way that lent gravitas rather than enfeeblement. Mr. Horley seemed taken with her, not the way I was, but in a wholesome, loyal dog sort of way that I'd seen before in men, but hadn't ever understood. Mrs. LeClerk was the money and driving force behind the revenge plot that was supposed to clear my name and avenger her late husband. She wore a gold band on a string around her neck, I'm guessing it was her husband's wedding ring and not just a favored bauble. I considered asking, but thought it better to say little or less so as not to give myself away as the wrong girl.

She gave me clothes, armed me, and set me up with a servant of my own. When she called me Sara, I nodded and agreed to whatever she wished of me. What was one more name that couldn't be traced back to Maine and my mother? Get a horse, make some contacts, learn of the plot that undid Mrs. LeClerk's husband and upended her world, then aid in whatever means I could to set things right. I'd be an outlaw, Mr. Horley told me, and I could do whatever I wished with that freedom as long as I came when his Mistress called. I didn't tell him that I would beg, bark, and curl up at Mrs. LeClerk's feet in my small clothes if she asked it, although I assume he'd do the same and wouldn't get quite the same thrill out of it that I would.

I took the guns, the threadbare clothes, my freedom, and let down my hair. What I'd done, I should feel bad for, and I did in part, but rotting for years in prison wouldn't bring back Varity and her husband had made money off the whole ordeal even with my wanton spending.

"Can my Mistress count on you, Miss Baldrich?" Mr. Horley asked.

"Indeed she can," I replied. "And Sara is fine."

Why shouldn't I breathe free? Why shouldn't I help a handsome mourning widow avenger her husband? Why shouldn't I take with both hands and never say sorry for filling my pockets? I ain't earned the right, but neither had anyone else who had ever done the same.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I didn't immediately go out to do what the nice rich lady and her lackey told me to. They gave me some reasonably clean, although painfully bland guns, a nice new hunting knife, some clothes that probably came off a dead man or out of the trash, and a horse ready to die if a stiff wind hit him wrong. I had ways of getting things, most of them being stealing, conning, or violence. I simply needed to look for a place to apply my skills and so I rode east.

So struck was I by the clean air on my face, a horse beneath me, and rolling open land without a prison wall or piss-stench cell blocking my way that I made it nearly to Roanoke before I took stock of my surroundings. A little stone farmhouse, tucked way back in the trees, had a light in a shuttered window but no smoke flowing from the chimney. I turned my skin and bones nag toward it and approached slow and quiet to unravel the mystery of inhabitation without comfort.

The side pen where chickens were kept held a fresh splash of blood and fluttering white feathers. On the other side I found a hastily, and not too deeply dug grave for more than a few folks.

I eased my way back around the front of the house, drew my pistol, and crept up like a shadow on an overcast day. The door burst in after a hard kick and I got the drop on the ugliest man I've ever cast eyes over. The outsides of his brows sloped hard down over eyes that would make more sense on an ancient hound with liver troubles. The rest of his face was a chewed ham hock hanging from a fence post. His chest was exposed, displaying sloppy tattoo work, grime, and matted hair. The tiny house reeked of body odor, trapped wood smoke, and the tang of gun oil. A sawed off, double barrel shotgun sat on the table in front of the man beside an oil lamp, a hair too far away to do him a lick of good with my pistol lined up right on the sweaty space between his sunken eyes.

"You're a damn ghost, girl," he growled in a low bass voice. "Well, are you going to kill me or do I have time for a smoke and a word?"

"The mass grave," I said.

"Stuck chimney flue," the man said. "Family asphyxiated and I gave them what burial I was able."

"So smoke." I eased the hammer back on my pistol, gave it a firm twirl and slid it back into the holster slung low on my hip. "And talk if that's what you want."

He rolled and lit a cigarette with deft fingers the size and shape of spring sausages left in the smokehouse too long. He took a drag and blew it out, his hands never inching toward the shotgun and his eyes never leaving mine.

"There are some men, three of them, hold up in the ruins of the big house, south of that dump, Van Horn," he said. "They stole a boat. The rowing kind if you know how. And I want it."

"You want me to steal your boat back?"

"Never said it was mine. I said I wanted it. That going to be a problem?"

I shrugged and shook my head.

"Good, good, that's the right attitude for this world," he said, gesturing at me with his cigarette, the cherry glowing faint red in the gloom of the cabin. "Row it up to Van Horn. There's a dock with a few buildings on it. I'll be waiting at the end."

"I'm not a charity."

"Ten dollars and the four little nuggets in my pocket are worth more than any boat, even this one."

I nodded and turned to leave. That was a lie. You don't pay someone more than a thing is worth to fetch it, but it was true enough on the face. Ten dollars and some gold scraps could buy five rowboats. The ugly man didn't strike me as the sentimental type, so it couldn't be a fond memory or a valued heirloom. Since none of it was my concern, I headed out to my horse with the setting sun at my back.

I found the mansion a little after dusk, right where the ugly man said it'd be. The sound of a dog whimpering and the smell of burned fur and flesh drew me close to the decrepit manor until I found the source. Some poor cur dog had been tied to a post and signed and kicked for the evening's entertainment. When I slid my new knife from its fresh leather sheath and freed the poor beast from its tether, it gave me one confused look before vanishing into the night. Good luck and Godspeed to fellow ne're-do-well. Keep your freedom if you can.

I saw the boat tied up when I slipped around the side of the house. I could probably abscond with it soft and quiet, letting the current of the huge river take me silently down and then rowing back far enough out that nobody in the manor could see or hear me. But I didn't do that. Didn't even give the plan serious consideration. I was hungry and I was angry.

Sneaking into the house wasn't easy. The doors creaked, the floorboards groaned, and the whole structure settled uneasily whenever I laid a boot down. I'd have been in a fight for certain if the men I was after hadn't drunk themselves into a stupor in the basement. Two were in chairs, hunched over a table near the fireplace, a collection of empty liquor bottles creating a barrier between them. The third was half flopped on an old sofa, his legs too long to fit with one dangling over the arm and the other off to the side.

Any farm girl of even the meanest skill can butcher a hog or a sheep. The most adept among us could make it so they never saw the knife and were gone from their body before the blood hit the mud. This was the end I offered the two drunken assholes at the table: quick, quiet, clean, not even enough violence to wake them before dying.

The third man on the sofa, the one I expected passed for the honcho of the trio, mostly because he had the biggest moustache and least vomit on his clothes. Him I woke up, he felt the knife and knew what it was to have a blade twisting in your innards while someone holds your mouth closed. The ugly man didn't say anything about killing the thieves, if they even were thieves. Might have been their boat all along, making me the thief rather than the repossesser. Didn't matter. They didn't die for the ten dollars, the gold, or on the ugly man's say so. Men that would do a thing like that to a dog would do worse given the chance and almost certainly had. The world would be well rid of them and I wouldn't have anyone to watch over my shoulder for.

The thing is, I hate people. Never came across two in a row that were worth the foulness on the bottom of a pig's hooves. The mangiest dog, surliest cat, or most temperamental, headstrong horse you can find is worth more than any twelve men you or anyone else can assemble. That dog gnawing on an old bone, flea-bitten, and filthy did more for the world than the three corpses I left in that basement and nobody would ever convince me otherwise.

I rowed the boat up the river until I could smell Van Horn and see the weak lights of torches, pitiful campfires, and a few guttering candles in windows. Rot, death, decay, and despair washed off that crumbling pile of timber, bricks, and rusted metal with every breeze that had the misfortune of passing over it. The water was a slick of dumped oil, raw sewage, and dead fish that nearly gagged me when I rounded the defunct lighthouse that stood empty, dark, and meaningless on the pile of rocks it was meant to warn of. I hastily found the dock the ugly man mentioned and rowed swiftly to it to tie off on a rotted support post near a moldering ladder.

The ugly man was at the top when I crested the end of the splintering pier. He handed me the promised ten dollar bill and handful of twisted little gold bits and scrambled down the ladder at a speed I thought imprudent for a man of his size and a ladder of such questionable integrity. He rooted around the seats of the boat until he found a little lockbox mounted beneath the rowing bench then climbed back up. He handed me the box to hold while he lifted a massive rock he must have brought with him from beside the end building and dropped it over the edge to punch a hole the size of his head in the boat. The little rowboat sank quickly into the murky, black water. The frayed tie-off rope unraveling from where the ugly man must have weakened it.

I handed him back the box that was the real goal.

"The man inside this building will buy anything you got off the thieves who took the boat," the ugly man said. "If you stole from them or robbed the graves you sent them to, don't concern yourself over it. They would have done worse to you given half the chance and gone out of their way to do me in if they knew I sent you. Survival, ghost girl, that's all that matters. Come find me again when you need more work for whatever reason."

And like that, the ugly man was gone, shuffling swiftly down the dock into the night and vanishing amongst the Van Horn residents that wouldn't know or care what business he'd conducted in their town.

I strode into the cluttered shop at the end of the dock that the ugly man had indicated. I had a little money, although the three assholes I'd killed didn't have anything of value on them to sell and only a handful of coins rattling around between them, but who knew what ten dollars and some gold might buy in a place like Van Horn?

Amid the crates, dusty crab traps, and stacks of pelts stood a gourd-headed man in a thick sweater beside a banjo displayed on the wall. He smiled, or at least I think he did since his brown moustache covered most of the face.

"Good evenin' to you, lassy!" he exclaimed in a thick brogue that felt like a warm reminder of home. "Joe said I should be expectin' you."

The ugly man had a boring name. That was a little disappointing, although I couldn't say much for myself considering I'd be happy if people thought I was Sara. I nodded and walked up to the counter the Scotsman stood behind.

"What do you need? It's all for sale, exceptin' the banjo on the wall there," the Scotsman said.

"Do you have a gun that won't cause embarrassment in front of the ladies?" I asked.

"I have just the thing," he exclaimed, "and Joe said to give you the first thing you asked for on the house." He reached under the counter and slid a beautiful, silver plated, pearl handled, heavily engraved double-action revolver across to me. "A man who knew guns, but not how to use them or cheat at cards used to own it, if ye catch my meanin.'"

"I do at that." I took the offered gun, felt the perfect balance of it, and did a few flairs with it before replacing the plain revolver Horley took from a prison guard to arm me.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I stopped off at the post office on the way out of Van Horn. A good postal agent will know most of what's going on in the area and won't mind telling you what they think if you listen quietly and compliment their uniforms. This particular agent behind some rusty bars in a little booth below the flophouse had hawkish features with a weak chin, an aquiline nose, and a greasy black moustache between. The bushy mutton chop sideburns he sported made him look like some rarified breed of chicken you'd see at a county fair.

"Where can a lady get a drink around here?" I asked him, smiling demurely.

"I don't normally talk to womenfolk if I can avoid it," the postal agent said, lisping and lilting his way through the declaration.

I'll just bet you don't, fella. I dropped the shy maiden routine immediately.

"But I can steer you away from Josie Dawson's establishment unless you're interested in drinking swill in utter squalor," he said. "Annesburg used to have a decent watering hole, but it shuttered awhile back. Emerald Ranch also had a saloon until the…unpleasantness. Your best bet would be in Valentine, but it's a ways to the west."

"I don't mind the ride," I said.

"If you're heading that way, would you mind doing some work along the way?" he asked.

I shrugged and nodded.

"You see, I'm a discouraged man," he said.

I'd never heard it called _that _before.

"I'm discouraged by a great many things, but mostly the ways in which the postal service takes me for granted and doesn't pay a wage commensurate with my efforts," he continued. "There are other discouraged members of my profession outside Emerald Ranch and at the Valentine station. Obviously our communiqués can't pass through official channels, so if you're willing to carry some tips and hints to my fellow discouraged men, we'd all be grateful to the tune of more work in the future if you're the type to get your hands dirty." He slid a $5 bill and two letters across the splintery counter and I took them.

"Consider it done," I said. "I'm pretty discouraged myself." Meaning it in both ways I assumed he intended it.

"I thought you might be," he said. "I'm Alden, by the way. Angus will be affixed to the benches at the station outside Emerald Ranch. Hector is managing stages and wagon traffic in Valentine's station, but only for another day, so you best hurry."

"Fine to meet you, Alden," I said. "I'm Sara for what it matters."

"We'll see how it matters in time," he said.

I rode west, following his instructions more or less to the letter. The skin and bones plow horse Horley stuck me with couldn't keep a consistent gate to save its life and didn't have the lung capacity to work up a lather. I walked it some of the time and came to call the hapless beast Dog Food because it's good to remember our futures, especially when they're so near.

Electric lights buzzed on the train station awning for Emerald Ranch when I rode up. Heavy summer bugs floated through the glow in thick clouds. The man I was meant to meet, Angus, sat on a bench, reading a newspaper and yawning like he was getting paid to do it.

"You Angus?" I asked. "Are you discouraged?"

"I am Angus," he said. "Discouraged, sure, I suppose. What I am is bored. I thought this little side venture of discouraged men would keep me awake, but it's just a different kind of tedium. Do you want work or…?"

I handed him the letter meant for him. He yawned, nodded, and tucked it inside his uniform jacket without reading it. "Thank you, I suppose," he said around another yawn that I was pretty sure was fake.

I nodded and walked back to Dog Food. I heard Angus mutter about living in a picture frame or some such nonsense as I rode away. 'If you're bored, you're boring,' my mom always said, then she'd heap chores on whoever dared claim idleness was a burden. Angus would not get along with my mom and I'd be pleased to see how she filled his schedule and kept after him in his tasks. Probably would end up an outlaw inside a week and light out for the territories like yours truly.

The ride west from there was powerfully boring until it wasn't. A great smoking, clanking, glowing compound arose from the rolling prairies and I wondered if the strange behemoth could possibly be Valentine. The presence of armed men, the stench of oil, turpentine, and gasoline told me different when I got close enough for inspection: a refinery of some kind surrounded by mercenaries. I had to wonder if so many armed men was normal in the heartlands. Did folks steal lamp oil?

I rode up and over the hill, putting the refinery at my back, and smelled Valentine long before I saw her. Sheep shit. It wasn't even cow shit. There's a hierarchy in ranching. Horses are at the top. To breed, raise, and sell horses, you have to have money, knowledge, and a mountain of tack and the skilled labor to maintain it. Then comes dairy cows. Below that are beef cattle. At the very bottom you'll find sheep. Sheep don't take more knowledge than falling off a log does. Almost anyone can drove them. In fact, a smart and by smart I mean lazy, sheep rancher will use dogs to move them and hire professionals to shear them. Any wall-eyed moron could raise sheep, most children included. Valentine wasn't likely to have money and the folks in it were probably going to be as callow and dim-witted as the animals they raised. Still, they'd have booze and that's what I was after.

I hitched Dog Food outside the train station and moseyed in to find a lone man on a bench, reading a newspaper, the only inhabitant of the building at that late hour. His hair was jet black and slicked backward.

"You Hector?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am, and you have the look of one of Alden's," the raven haired man said. "I'll tell you what I've been telling him for years. I'm not disgruntled, despondent, or any other word he can think of to justify his acting out."

"Can't say I care what your disposition is." I removed the letter from my pocket, crumpled it up, and dropped it in the nearest waist basket.

"If you're interested in honest work, I'm heading west to Blackwater in the morning," Hector said. "Maybe even Strawberry if the money is right. Hell, I might go all the way to New Austin if the mood strikes. If you find me, I'll find some honest work for you to do. How's that sound?"

I knew more than enough of being a woman in a world run by men to know when I was being propositioned and that wasn't what Hector was doing. The guy seemed legitimately disinterested in my name, what was between my legs, or what kinds of skills I might have. It was the mark of a man with more work to be done than lifetimes to do it in and if I wouldn't or couldn't do it, he wouldn't mind asking the next desperate soul to come his way.

"If I make it that far west, we'll have a chat," I told him before walking out.

I had to ride past the stockyard to the rest of the town and I nearly vomited on the back of Dog Food's head in the process. The potency of sheep shit, urine, and unwashed swine was enough to make even a hardened rancher girl like myself pitch biscuits. By the time I was on the other side of the stench, I was more in need of a drink than ever. The saloon was easy to find on the lone muddy lane of the town. Light poured from the swinging doors and front windows carrying the tinkling of piano music with it. I hitched Dog Food in front of the general store, closed for the evening, and headed up the plank sidewalk into the saloon.

Judgmental folks who never set foot in a saloon don't know the joys and the pains of the places, especially if there's a brothel attached. Right through the swinging doors is an odor unique to most whiskey and whore establishments. Customers track in mud and animal shit from the thoroughfare; they add vomit, spittoon mud, sweat, and cigar smoke once inside; and then there's the stale beer, both spilled and waiting to be spilled, from the bar, the musk of sex wafting down from upstairs, and fetid food being cooked in the back if the establishment boasts a dinner menu. The Valentine saloon had all of the above, but the overwhelming nose was that of sheep dung.

I breathed it in, not only because I had no other choice, but also because it smelled like freedom. People that say freedom is a sweet smell don't know the smell of incarceration or what stench freedom can have.

I was an oddity in the saloon, not that I'm not peculiar most places. A wary eye followed me as I walked in long-legged strides, tall as the tallest man there and armed with a silver plated pistol on my hip in a gunslinger's holster positioned for a quick draw.

Someone had painted the white and red barber pole stripes down a post at the front of the saloon, creative if not befitting of the overall humbleness of the town. I saw a man in a white coat in the back, working a cigar beneath a trimmed moustache, waiting for patrons in need of a shave or a haircut. Most everyone there did need grooming, but the patronage had unanimously decided to spend their money on whiskey and women rather than on hygiene.

I passed a poker table on the right, abandoned for more raucous carousing, and a piano on the left where a squat man in a bowler hat pounded out a tune with far more enthusiasm than skill. The barber set aside his newspaper and vacated the barber chair when I was clear I'd be his only customer that night.

"What can I help you with, Miss…" the barber asked.

"Miss Bostik, and if you can get the frizz off the ends, the road off the rest, and a shine back into everything, I'd be happy to tell everyone you're a miracle worker," I told him as I flopped into his chair.

He tried to be gentle. Considering his clientele was mostly ranchers, cowboys, and day laborers, he actually did a pretty good job of getting the prison off my head and making me look like someone of a reasonable station in the world. My second-hand, or even third or fourth-hand clothes immediately betrayed me as a vagabond, but at least my long, fire-red hair was all pointed in more or less the same direction, smelled of fine pomade, and shined like penny straight out of the Denver mint. I thanked him, paid in the handful of change I'd freed out of dead men's pockets, and made my way to the bar.

"Working girls don't get service until after midnight," the bartender said when I shouldered my way between two sloppy patrons.

"I'm not a working girl," I replied. "I'm a relaxing woman and don't make that mistake again."

"You got money?" he snorted.

"You got an attachment to your teeth?" I sneered back.

"Go soak your head, missy," the bartender said and waved me away.

"If she ain't got money, I've got a way for her to earn it," someone behind me slurred. "My pecker is ripe from the trail and sheep fucking, but I figure it can stand to get a little dirtier inside…"

The rest of his sentence was lost in a spray of blood and broken teeth. I'd fought boys when I was coming up and men when the boys learned to run from me. If the drunk had been smart, he'd have gone down and played possum. Instead, he fought to stay upright and took three hard strikes to the ribs, an elbow smashed across his nose, and a right hook so hard his jaw swung back and forth like a rusty gate all the way down to the floor.

At the right hour on most nights, a cow-town saloon is one stubbed toe away from an all out brawl. The hour was too late and the effort required to conjure a melee among the gathered thirty or so men simply didn't exist anymore. The drunk hit the floor and people simply stepped over him. I kept a keen eye to the crowd for any friends the downed man might have, but it appeared he wasn't known or liked well enough for anyone to revenge on his behalf.

Since I wasn't getting service downstairs, I headed up into the mezzanine where the working girls surveyed the masses hoping for a customer who didn't offer to pay in pretty words and didn't look like the muddy scrotum of a diseased bull. There weren't many men in the saloon that didn't match that exact description, so there were plenty of girls left staring and wondering how dirty they were willing to get for a dollar.

I wasn't immediately more welcome upstairs than down, walking among the smoke that had risen to the ceiling, the potent perfume the ladies of the night wore to be noticed above the saloon's stink, and the red carpeting that had thinned out to a handful of threads right down the middle. Maybe they took me for competition. They'd definitely seen what I'd done with my fists and might have wondered if I'd give the same treatment to a lady if she tossed a cruel word my way. Prison was full of women worth fighting, but outside the penitentiary walls, those women were rare and I'd need a damn good reason to throw fists at another lady.

Rather than go begging for attention, I simply leaned over the railing to watch with the rest of them. I wasn't interested in plying the whore's trade, wouldn't be any good at it even if I had a mind to give it a go. It was simply a nicer view and sweeter smelling company on the second level.

"My, my, my, am I lucky I ran into you," a velvety voice whispered from the left.

"And why is that?" I asked before turning my head. When I did give her a look, my heart flew straight into my throat and nearly choked me. Her raven hair was braided and draped over a shoulder. Her pouty lips sported a crimson sheen. And her blue eyes sparkled like ice frozen against granite.

"Because I've got a room and a wet pussy and nobody's been in either all week," she said with a smile that set fire to my imagination and nearly took out my knees.

"That is a goddamn tragedy and I won't let it stand for one moment longer," I assured her and followed where she led.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I awoke to the invigorating chill of mountain air filtering in through the window and the sticky sweet scent of the yarrow flower bouquet sitting on the nightstand beside the bed. The flowers had to be from a cowboy, an admirer no doubt. They didn't grow all that close to town and aside from smelling nice, they weren't flowers a lady would pick for décor. Gold light slowly gave way as morning wore on, but I didn't dare stir because my sleeping partner was snoozing soundly with her head resting on my shoulder and her arm draped over my stomach.

She was drooling on me and the spittle was sticking her raven hair to my pale, freckled skin, but I didn't mind. I had a good deal more of her all over me the night before and enjoyed every second of it. Her lips had set fires on my skin, her fingers sought out every sensitive place in need of a caress, and she kissed in such a way that would make a girl forget her own name.

I stealthily reached over to my hat on the nightstand and slipped a single gold nugget from the band. It was a twisted, dirty little thing that gleamed with inherent value and I thought I even heard is sing to me. I wanted more of it, so much more of it.

"Where'd a woman like you get a gold nugget?" my groggy bedmate asked.

"I helped a man get a boat," I replied, never taking my eyes off the sparkling pebble between my fingers. "I'm going to get enough of this stuff to sleep on it."

"You're a prospector?"

I scoffed. The thought of me shoveling and sifting and squatting in a river until my feet froze and my back broke just to pull some dust and nuggets from the sand was utterly ridiculous. "Other people will mine the gold," I said. "I'll do whatever it takes to get it once it's out of the ground."

"You seem more the type for that," she said. "I never caught your name when your head was buried between my legs."

"Verity Bostik."

"That's a lie."

"Sara…" I'd forgotten the last name of the dead girl I was supposed to be, not the one I threw over the railing of a ship, but the other dead girl hanged for a crime she didn't commit and left to rot because serendipity chose me. "Just Sara."

"Another lie," she said. "Fine, don't tell me. Sara works as well as anything else, I suppose."

"And what's your name?"

"Francine Beauchamp," she told me, "from Saint Denis."

"Well, Francine, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance after our lovely night together." I kissed her on the top of the head, squeezed her closer to my side, and reveled in the sensation of her large, perky breasts pressing against my side. "What do I owe you for your hospitality and companionship?"

"Asking after the fact pegs you as a greenhorn," she said.

"I've never paid for sex."

"And bragging that you've never paid for sex is a guaranteed way to get charged double."

"I'm not bragging," I objected. "Simply stating a fact that is no longer true and wasn't thought of one way or the other. I had a time worth remembering last night, slept like the newly departed afterward, and woke up to a beautiful morning. If that costs money, I'm glad to pay it."

"That is by far the most words I've heard you speak since I first laid eyes on you," Francine said. "I like that you're green, and go on claiming you've never paid for sex or sold it, but the things you do with your mouth and hands argue otherwise."

"I said I never paid for it," I countered. "Didn't say I never had it."

She sat up and gave me a look with those ice blue eyes that shot straight through me. Her eyes were almost pretty enough to distract me from the milky white mounds of her breasts that she brazenly left exposed while she studied me. Almost, mind you.

"That gold nugget will cover the fuck, the overnight accommodations, a bath this morning, and a tip on where you might get some paying work if you're any good with that fancy gun you wore in here," Francine said.

I didn't have the experience or information required to haggle this deal, but that never stopped me from trying. Besides, I could tell Francine wanted gold as much as I did from how she followed the nugget with her eyes like a cat whenever I moved it.

"I think a week of sleeping in your bed would make more sense," I countered.

"Sex is extra."

"Sex is extra if it's my idea; it's free if it's yours."

"Deal!" She snatched the gold out of my hand so quickly that I had to wonder if I'd struck a foolish bargain and paid too much for too little. Lesson learned, I suppose: if the person you're bartering with is happier than you about the deal struck, then you just got fleeced.

We got dressed and moseyed across the street, down past the bank, and to the hotel where the jovial, moon-faced fellow behind the counter greeted Francine as a known entity and viewed me with unabashed skepticism.

"Working today, Miss Beauchamp?" he asked.

"Starting with this one and seeing what else wanders in," she replied, guiding me toward the back room where hot baths were advertised to be found.

She closed the door behind us, started the kerosene heaters beneath the copper tub, and waited for me to disrobe again. I'd somehow found myself bashful during the walk across the street and nearly considered slipping behind the privacy screen to undress. Sensing my skittishness, Francine rolled her eyes and began busying herself with other chores like topping off the tub with a nearby bucket, scenting the water, and laying out the bathing instruments I might need or want. I undressed rather swiftly and practically leapt into the still bracing water.

"Why exactly are you…?" Was all I managed to say before she doused my hair with water and began washing it. Her strong, slender fingers, which I already knew to be gifted at other pleasurable activities, sent surges of pure ecstasy through my body and chills running across every inch of skin when she worked my mane of red hair into a lather.

"Not much whoring to do in the daytime," she informed me. "Me and some of the other girls assist with baths for those who can't enjoy the more thorough services at the saloon."

"Why couldn't a person enjoy it all?"

"Some do, like yourself, but others lack the means for more than a four-bit scrubbing or have certain moral objections about prostitution that don't extend to a kind caress that stays on the limbs."

"You're a talented lady, Miss Beauchamp," I informed her as she moved on to scrub my shoulders. "Why don't you tell me about this work you've heard of?"

"There are two brothers who used to run the livery here in town, Clay and Clive," she said. "They were forced to sell cheap rather than face the wrath of the certain powerful interests in town that didn't like the competition for the stockyard. They're trying to set up one last score before they take their act on the road."

"So, cattle rustling or horse thieving?"

"The latter, no doubt. They're horsemen through and through. Twins, actually, although one is supposedly feebleminded. I have my doubts about that, and wonder if they don't switch off who is playing the dummy sometimes," she said, sliding her soapy hands up my leg to guide it to the edge of the tub. "That's neither here nor there."

"Horse thieving never bothered me," I boldly claimed. I'd never done any of it, never even knew anyone who had, but the statement was still true on a technicality: I wasn't bothered by the concept.

"Good, I'll introduce you to Clive and Clay when we're done here." The conversation ended good and proper when her mouth met mine and her hand slid between my legs.

#

I tell you, if my feet touched the ground when I walked out of the hotel, it was only as light as dandelion dander on an unbowed blade of grass. I had a shiny gun on my hip, was as clean as I'd been since I was pretending to be Verity, and I had a raven-haired beauty on my arm. The sun shone only on us when we walked across the muddy street to the stables where two men were loading up a wagon.

Clive and Clay were as identical as any two milk bottles out of a factory, just as tall, skinny, and pale as them too. Their short brown hair was shaved on the sides, left messy on the top, and extended to a weasely moustache above Clay's thin lips, but not his brother's. They stopped what they were doing when we approached and took a moment to bow and tip their hat to Francine but gave me a top to bottom look over.

"This is Miss Sara," Francine said without missing a beat. "Sara, these are the Davies brothers: Clive and Clay. Clay's the one that talks and Clive's the one that works."

"Division of labor, lovely lady," Clay said. "Every successful venture has it."

"The type of labor you all get up to is no interest of mine, but my friend here is more than able," Francine said, slipping her arm out of the crux of mine. "I'll leave you to it."

"She's a sharp one," Clay said, following Francine's lovely figure with his eyes, same as I was, when she walked back toward the hotel. "Work was it? I've got one more job, well, one for now, anyway."

I nodded and smiled.

"You don't say much, do you?"

"Am I here to talk?"

"No, ma'am, you are not!" Clay beckoned me closer and we walked into the stables together where the beautiful smell of hay, horse sweat, and leather tack filled my nose, making me winsome for home.

"There's a fella in town, fancies himself a big shot sheep baron or some such," Clay said. "He don't like me and my brother one bit, or our little horse trading venture."

"And you'd like him removed."

"No, no, nothing like that," Clay said, waving the notion of murder away like a foul odor. "He turns up missing or dead, we're primary suspects since he made no secret of wanting us gone. Nope, me and Clive are going to make our way down to Lemoyne, enjoy the warm weather and southern hospitality." Clay's features darkened and his voice dropped to a sinister note. "But we aren't leaving without bidding farewell to our good friend who saw us to the door so rudely. He's got some horses out on Firewood Rise. We'd like them acquired and brought down to Greenbank Mill where we will take possession of them and begin a new chapter in our storied lives among the red clay and former slavers down south."

"How many horses we talking?"

"Twenty head, but you won't be going alone and you won't be responsible for the herd." Clay had maneuvered me while we spoke through the stables and out the other side where three men awaited us. "These gentlemen will handle the messy work outdoors, while you will slip into the private stable and steal the red chestnut Arabian he's been showing off around town the past week."

"The pay…?"

"Will be substantial, but only if the horses are healthy, meaning no bullet wounds," Clay said, turning his attention to the three men. "You hear that? Don't get my new horses shot."

The three men were as commonplace in cow towns, mill towns, mining towns, or anywhere hardworking laborers could be found. They weren't the hardworking laborers, mind you, but the types who fancied they might become so, traveled to a place to find work only to discover they had no taste for it. Then, they'd do what they had to in order to eat and that was usually thievery or worse. The big one on the end wasn't fat nor muscular, just big in an overall sort of way. He was barely contained in tattered overalls and a beat up bowler sat at a jaunty angle on his shave, melon head. The other two looked related, perhaps cousins. They had the same slender build, large hands, and cleft chin. They both gnawed on unlit cigars and stared me down like they were angling for a fight or fuck or maybe both. I stared at them right back until the big fella in the bowler hat moved us all along to our horses.

"These horses, excepting the Arabian, aren't legally gained in the first place, so don't expect any trouble from the law since nobody will be hollering for the sheriff's help," Clay said, "but don't take that to mean nobody will try to stop you."

I hauled myself up into Dog Food's saddle and nodded. I hadn't expected a casual ride through the mountains on a gentle trail. Besides, if I did my job correctly, they wouldn't know I'd been there until I was long gone.


End file.
